Week 9 (Finishing up the MTC

你好！

This week has been an absolute blast, and it is sad to say that I am going to miss the MTC.  My district and zone have been absolutely amazing.  We have grown in ways that none of us can explain and we all can definitely seen a change in ourselves and everyone else in the district.  

Probably my favorite thing about the MTC while I have been here, is the opportunity I have had to learn and grow spiritually.  There is something about being in the MTC that makes it so powerful and amazing.  And with that being said, I am so excited to be able to share those things I have learned and felt with those I will be teaching in Taiwan and even on the way to Taiwan.

For the week, it all went really fast.  As the number of days went from two digits remaining to one digit and even now to hours remaining, they just keep flying by, and we all wish we had more time.  There are some many things we wish we had time to do, and so little to do it in.

One of the things we had the opportunity to do this week, was Skype (TRC), which was so fun.  We taught a member and created such a strong bond with him.  He was very easy going and really fun to talk with.  I have never had a lesson with it felt like it was so easy to talk because we didn't need to worry about if we messed up on a word.

This week, along with Skype, we also had a couple of other opportunities to teach in Chinese.  Those were all done in Chinese with our teachers.  All of the lessons went really well, but they definitely did challenge us with questions that seemed a lot harder to explain in Chinese than we thought they should be.  Now that we are leaving tomorrow, our teachers told us the history of the investigators they were playing.  All of them were real investigators and it really was interesting to see how all of it ended up for them in real life.

One of the cooler things that we got to do this week was pick out our chinese name.  Jin Laoshi, one of our teachers, gave us a variety of names that he felt would work for us.  For example, one of the ones my companion got was guan (4 tone) ming (2 tone), which means "champion engraved in the heart."  The one that I chose was jun (4 tone) jie (2 tone).  I am unable to write the characters on this computer, but I will let you look up what meaning of it is.  It is very close to an actual word in Chinese, but he character for jun (4 tone) is slightly different because it has the symbol of a horse in front, making my name have more meaning and not be an actual word.  With the horse symbol in front, it adds to the meaning of having the strength and spirit of a horse.  This was really pretty fun and we all loved picking out our names as one of the last activities we did with Jin Laoshi because he would be gone for the next while for his honeymoon.  (He got married Friday morning, so our last class with him was on Thursday)

I am sure Nicole and Trent remember this, and I am sure Mom and Dad do as well, but on Friday, we had "In Field Orientation."  It is basically were we get a little bit of time with teachers and all the other missionaries leaving theMTC this week to practice what we have learned while we have been here in the MTC to better prepare us for being out in the mission field.  My favorite part of it were the teachers.  They were all telling stories of things that they did on their mission that they pry could have done better and then we role played that situation so that we would not make similar errors on our missions.

Lastly, for the events of the week, we had our last two devotionals.  On Tuesday, we had a member of the seventy and his family bear his testimony.  It was really cool to hear all of the testimonies and their witness of Christ.  On Sunday, the talk was given by Brother Allen, the head of the Missionary Department.  It was a really good talk.  He talked about how we need to serve and become examples of our Savior.  How as we live worthy and do the things that we have been asked to do, such as following the white hand book, we will find miracles on our missions and through out our lives.  As for the last Sunday movie, we watched the Characteristic of Christ by David A. Bednar.  It really is an amazing talk and gives each of us something that we can improve on to become better.  The phrase he based his talk on was "With out the character of Christ, there would have been no atonement."  There is something that you can think about and even after thinking about it, there is still more that you could consider.

My time is pretty much us.  Just want to say thanks for everything and am looking forward to hearing from you all next week!

Love,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

P.S.  I am sending a few photos this week, some of my district and some of the zone.  The big photo of the entire zone is actually missing a few people.  Right now, there are about 130 Mandarin speakers (in the 9 week program) at the MTC, which is pretty sweet. The only sad thing was this morning, we sent one of the Mandarin missionaries, Elder Francis, on his way to New Zealand.

MTC Week 8

你好！

To begin off with, this week we got our flight plans!  That was probably one of the highlights of the week. We are flying Delta from Salt Lake City to Japan to Taiwan Tuesday morning.  We got that those plans Thursday after dinner.  Which means, all of the visa things have worked out for us.  Generally they won't give you a flight plan unless they have your visa completed.

For a brief summary of the week, we had lots of teaching opportunities and good bonding experiences, which is really nice since we all know that our time at the MTC is also coming to an end here in just over a week. 

So for Monday, the big thing we had was teaching a member in Taiwan.  This is our second week of teaching over Skype, and it is such a blast.  The only hard part is that it is over Skype and not face to face.  So in the last lesson, we were teaching about the importance of prayer and how prayer can help us receive revelation.

On Tuesday, we had another Chinese speaking lesson, which went really well.  We usually do role playing to help us prepare for the lessons, but this time we did it all in Chinese and spent twice as long role playing.  That really did make a difference in our lessons because it really told us what we needed to study during language study so that we could be completely prepared for the lessons.  Later that evening, we also had devotional, which was given by L. Edward Brown, who was a seventy and also a mission president in Korea.  The biggest thing he talked about was how we use Christ name in the church.  The thing I liked best was how he was talking about blessings and how we are not blessing people in our names, but in Christ name which give is power.

For teaching lessons, Wednesday was the busiest.  We taught three lessons, two in Chinese and one in English.  As crazy as it may sound with how much work it took to prepare all three, it was so much fun.  We are able to teach about the gospel and see the changes that the investigators are willing to make to become better through living the gospel and its standards.  The only thing we didn't do, was host this week.  We have hosted four time at the MTC, and that is all we will get to do.  We have been told that we will not be hosting this week, which was a little sad for us to find out, but we will all survive.

On Thursday, we actually didn't have any lessons, so we were just preparing for our future lessons.  On Thursdays, we also have service.  I don't think I've mentioned this before in other emails, but we have service in the morning cleaning one of the other dorms.  It is usually pretty good.  We have learned to get there as fast as we can after gym so that we can get out sooner too.  The reason for that is because of showers in our residence.  All of the missionaries on our floor have the same schedule, so anything you can do to beat the crowd to the showers is worth it.

On Friday, we taught two lessons.  One in English and one in Chinese.  They were both really good lessons.  As a companionship, we have loved teaching in English because we know that we are actually able to get our message across with out too much trouble.  In Chinese, we generally have to pause to think about each sentence we want to say to make sure that we have the vocab to say it all.  But, with that being said, when we don't always know the vocab that keeps things really interesting as we try to explain/define the word in Chinese so that our investigator can help us out.

On Saturday, we only had one lesson which was in Chinese.  This lesson was pry one of the hardest lessons because our investigator kept telling us that she had been baptized previously and didn't see the point of needing to get baptized again.  We tried explaining that you need the authority, but didn't know how to explain it because she says that the priest that baptized her into the Catholic church had the correct authority.  So, we never actually finished explaining why she needed to be re-baptized, so we know what we are going to be trying to teach her again this week.  Should be interesting and fun.

On Sunday, as usual, we got to go on the Temple walk, which was actually pretty good.  It wasn't too hot and the weather was really good.  And for Mom, I actually took photos this week.  So I have attached a few photos.  As well, there is a photo of my district with our branch presidency.  We had to get the photo this week because next week, Brother Seow, one of the counselors will be in Singapore for a business trip.  So we had to take photos yesterday.  Also, the other big thing from yesterday, was going to devotional, which was given by T.C. Christensen.  He is the director for many of the church films, one of which was 17 Miracles.  For his talk, he showed a couple of video clips and then gave a little more insight on them.  The biggest one that I thought was cool was in 17 Miracles, when the mother and daughter are blessed with a pie on the road.  He explained that to us, a pie is a desert, but how for many of the immigrants from England, they thought of a pie as a meat and potato type pie.  And for them, this would be a comfort type food.  He explained how God is always there, and he will comfort us in times of need by giving us things that will help us best.  He also talked about how we should keep journals because if we look at the pioneers, there are plenty of things that happened, that were never recorded.  One of which is how in 17 Miracles, there was actually a full wagon of handy cap people that were crossing, but the only one that actually have a better record of was Albert.  We all found that really interesting.  We also talked that night about how keeping a journal is really important because it is a way for us to really remember what has happened in the past because we are all very forgetful.

Sadly, my time is starting to run out.  Thanks for all the emails, letters and prayers.

Love,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

  

Todd's Two Companions with District Presidency

half of all the elders that are now in our zone

 There are so many going Chinese speaking.  In total between both the zones right now, there are about 105 missionaries going Chinese, and this Wednesday, there will be 135.  Chinese is quite the popular language.

Todd's MTC District

MTC Week 7

你好！

This has been another amazing week, and for some of it, I don't know where to start.  But to begin off, it is amazing to see how fast the time flies here at the MTC.  None of us really noticed it, but we only have 14 days left in the MTC with our teachers, which feels incredibly fast.  But at the same time, we are all really excited to get out into the mission field to see what we actually know how to say.

Now to get to the week, where there were so many cool things that happened.

On Monday, we had our first time of teaching an Taiwanese person.  It was an absolute blast.  It was a little harder that when we teach our teachers because it was over Skype.  We all really liked it and are looking forward to doing it again this week.

On Tuesday, we taught one gold tag for the day.  It was really cool to see how the lesson we had planned was not actually what we ended up teaching our investigator.  It is truly amazing how the spirit will guide you to teach something else than what you have planned because God knows what they need most in their lives at this moment.  The other cool thing for the day was that we got to pick up one of the new Elders in the zone.  He is an international missionary from Scotland going Chinese speaking in Canada.  The best part is that he has the best Scottish accent I have ever heard.  We all loved getting to meet him and hang out with him for the evening, and as well go to devotional, which was given by another apostle, Elder Neil L. Anderson.  He talked about how our missions are not only a time for us to teach others, but also to become more Christ like, and as we  become more Christ like, that is when we really we be able to teach the people in our mission.  My favorite part of the talk though was when he talked about the Holy Ghost being a spirit of change.  The spirit is here to help us change and become better than who we are right now.  I can definitely say that that is true, and it is amazing to see the changes that can be made because of it.

On Wednesday, we were completely booked.  To begin off, we were hosting again.  This is now our fourth time of hosting, and a lot of the volunteers are starting to recognize all of us from the past weeks, which is pretty cool.  This week, there were about 700 missionaries coming in again.  49 of those missionaries where Chinese speaking.  Which now makes our buildings, both residence and class room area, really packed, but we are all loving it.  Out of the 49 mandarin speakers that came in, 29 of them were in our zone, and my companionship had the opportunity to welcome them that night.  We introduced them to the white handbook, got them to introduce themselves, and then showed them around the campus.  It was really fun, and really did made Sacrament meeting on Sunday over twice the size it was last week.

On Thursday, it was really relaxed, in that we just had time to study.  How that we are on week 7, they have taught us a majority of what they need to and class time has become more of practicing what we have already learned so that it becomes more natural for us.  But with that being said, there is still plenty more that we can study, it is not free time in any way shape or form.

On Friday, we were able to teach one lesson, which was in Chinese.  As a companionship, we have really grown in these lessons as we have learned that each of us are able to share different experiences in Chinese that the other companion is not yet able to.  Which makes it a real blessing to be in a companionship of three because then there is a lot more that can be said within a lesson.

Saturday was almost the same as Friday, except that we taught a different Chinese investigator.  We were also able to work with some of the new districts on preparing for Sunday and the testimonies that they would have to give.  It is really amazing to see how much of a different the MTC can do in preparing you to go out to the mission field.  Even for my companions, it was really amazing for them to see how far they have come since the first few days in the MTC, when they were also starting to learn Chinese.

This has truly been an amazing week and I am loving the opportunity that I have to be serving the Lord.

Thanks for all the emails, letters and prayers.

Love,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

Week 6

你好！

This week has been just another one of those weeks that has been a blast.  We have been learning so much and have had so many opportunities to serve and to teach, even here in the MTC.  And with this coming week, it will only be getting better as we are going to begin skyping people in Taiwan for teaching lessons.

One of the questions I got asked, was is it starting to get crowded here at the MTC.  The answer to that is yes and no.  With the English speaking missionaries only being here for two weeks, it really feels like it is empty.  Especially on Tuesday for dinner in the cafeteria, because all of the missionaries that will be leaving that week, will have already have left and none of the new missionaries will be coming.  As for the cafeteria being crowded for the rest of the week, we don't really notice it.  We have the first meal times, and so we never have trouble finding seats or anything in the cafeteria.  And for us, those meal times don't look like they will be changing.  The MTC doesn't really change the schedule of where the missionaries are at unless there is something crazy coming up.  This is the same for our residence as well.  They will not be putting any more missionaries into our room.  It will just be my companions and me, which is pretty epic.  I have attached a few pictures of our room.  It is pry one of the coolest rooms, I am sure you will notice why when you look at the one with the lights off and all the stars shining.  One thing that I have not gotten of photo of yet are my teachers.  Generally, we will get photos with our teachers at the end of our stay at the MTC, that way we can have a photo with all of our teachers at the same time.

Also, the Fourth of July.  For the Fourth, we had regular classes for most of the day, except the end of the day.  They had a devotional planned.  We had a speaker talk to us about heroes, and what they have done to make everything possible for us today in our lives.  And after that, we watched 17 miracles.  I had seen the movie once before my mission, but it is still such a cool movie to watch.  Now to explain why they did the devotional.  I am sure the MTC has figured out how to time this all so perfectly, but as soon as the movie ended, the MTC President's first counselor announced that sadly, the performance of, I believe, Carry Underwood at the stadium of fire and just "unfortunately" finished.  As you may now see, they had planned this out very well.  But they then told us that we could go watch the fireworks from out side and eat ice cream that they had provided for everyone.  It was pretty cool, but I do have to say, felt like I was back in China because a lot of the fireworks they did are considered pretty normal in China.

Now for the week, and all the fun events.

On Monday, for P-day, it was really switched around.  As Trent and Nicole pry know, the Provo Temple was closed for cleaning, so we weren't able to go do temple work.  However, we were able to go do a different type of temple work.  Our job, as the elders, were to help remove all the carpeting in the celestial room.  They then had us also help remove all the glue that held the carpet down.  Lets just say that that was quite the labor intensive work out.  Luckily for me, I didn't come out with any blisters on my hands, but a good number of the other elders did.  Over all though, the experience we had in the temple was really cool.  We all really enjoyed the experience and am pretty sure none of us will forget it.  Just to let you know what the sisters in our district did, they got to clean the chandelier.  They took one crystal down at a time from the chandelier, cleaned them, and then put them back on.  They gave that job to the sisters cause they new that they were a lot less likely than the elders to drop them.

On Tuesday, we only taught one lesson, which was in English to a Gold tag.  We have really loved teaching in English because it means that we are actually able to communicate our thoughts with the people we are teaching.  The only other thing that happened that day, with the exception of studying which is a daily thing, was going to devotional.  Brother Lowell M Snow, who was a recent seventy, came and spoke to us.  The biggest thing I got from his talk was "Who's image do we want others to see as we are in the world."  He related this to us as missionaries and the image of Christ and his attributes, that as we are missionaries, should show to others at all times.

On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to host again.  It is always so much fun to see all the new missionaries coming in and finding out where they are going.  This time, I hosted a good number of people going English speaking.

On Thursday, we had one lesson, which was in Chinese.  Our companionship is starting to get pretty good at teaching in Chinese, but the hardest part is just remembering all the vocab for a given lesson.  This lesson, we were teaching him about keeping the Sabbath day holly, but we all kept forgetting words that would help explain why we keep it holy.   But, it is always a fun experience and always interesting to see what words we use to try and explain the point we are trying to teach.  That evening, we also got to see all the new missionaries that are coming into our zone on Wednesday.  There are four sisters coming in and twenty six elders coming in.  We are all pretty excited for all the new elders and sisters.

On Friday, we had classes, and then after the classes, we had the activities for the Fourth, the devotional, film, and then the fireworks.  We all had a really good time.

On Saturday, we had TRC.  We got to teach two lessons, both twenty minutes long.  Surprisingly though, one of the ones we taught actually knew one of my roommates from BYU-I.  They served in the same mission, but my roommate was English and he was Chinese speaking.

On Sunday, we had Mission conference.  The biggest thing that was talked about in mission conference was the importance of using Preach my Gospel to its full extent.  They said that Preach my Gospel is one of the few books in the church that all of the quorum and first presidency worked on together.  We all thought that they was pretty profound and cool.  They also talked to us about the new guidelines for teaching on our missions that were announced here over the past week.  Which are teaching all five lessons before baptism.  Teaching all five lessons again after baptism, which use to be the wards duty.  And then the missionaries remaining in contact with the converts for at least a year after their baptism.  We then had fast and testimony meeting, which was all in Chinese.  I didn't know this, but the Chinese branches are one of the few that actually use their mission language through out the entire sacrament meeting.  Generally, all of the Asian languages are combined because they are not big enough to have their own branch.  We then had devotional that night, which was given by Josh Wright.  When we first saw him, we were all a little confused.  He looks like he is maybe 23 or 24 years old.  Then they actually introduced him, and Nicole may know who he is.  He is a professional pianist, who has won competitions around the world.  It was really a cool devotional.  He played four piano pieces for us, I think everyone's jaws dropped as we listened to the music.  He related playing music to missionary work.  We must be creative on our missions and use our talents to help share the gospel with others.

Hope everyone is having safe travels, and thanks for all the emails and letters!

Love,

Elder Okeson

P.S.  One cool thing I learned about my mission, President Day loves having his missionaries share their talents.  One of our teachers, Jin Laoshi, who also knows Trent, coached a high school basketball team on his mission as part of sharing the gospel.  They said they had tones of opportunities to teach because everyone just wanted to talk with the American coaches.  Also as a side note, they won the national championship, so he is on a plaque at a school for winning that championship.

MTC Week 5

你好！

This week has really been a blast because there has been so much going on.  This week, because of the new Mission President Seminar, everything has been a little different than usual.

With the Mission President Seminar, none of us actually got to meet any of the quorum, but those missionaries who were getting new Mission Presidents for their mission, got a chance to meet them Monday night.  Only one missionary in our district got that opportunity.  It was Elder Francis, who is going to New Zealand, Chinese speaking.

So far, I have been with three companions the entire time.  We have been doing splits relatively often for choir and a few other things, but generally I am with Elder Love and Elder Nixon.  They both are really great companions.  We all come from different types of backgrounds and different styles of families, but it really is great because it makes each of our lessons different and more interesting because of it.

Also for the number of weeks I will be in the MTC.  It looks like I will be here for the entire nine weeks.  They still do ones that are shorter, such as two weeks or four weeks, but that is predetermined before you actually come into the MTC.  Also, my mission president only likes missionaries to come on the transfers, that way it is easier for him to organize things.  Which is a little bit of a bummer for one of the sisters in our district.  She was in the fast track Chinese going to Taipei as well, but because of visa delays, she missed her chance to go three weeks ago.

For email timing, here at the MTC, we only get an hour, but our Branch President is pretty relaxed on that.  He just says make sure that it doesn't go over two hours, or we will need to have a chat about it.  As for out in Taiwan, I have heard a lot about the Mission President.  Just yesterday, we ran into a branch president that knew him and his comments were that we did something right in our past life to get President Day.  For emailing, it doesn't sound like he has a time limit, just that you can only check your email on p-day.  And for when you first get to Taiwan, the way you find out who your trainer will be is similar to a game show.  He has a power point set up that has a spinner of all the trainers, and with the click of a button, it will spin to who your trainer is.  From what I heard from the last district of Missionaries that went out, that is what happens because President Day likes to make it more exciting and fun for the new missionaries and the current missionaries.  So, I am really excited to get out there and meet him.

Now for the events of the week.

Monday was pretty relaxed.  We spent most of our P-day out at the field because the main gym was closed off for the Mission President Seminar as well.  They were using it for some of the bigger presentations and activities for the seminar.  We also went to the temple in the morning, and I can now understand some of the comments that I have heard from Trent about how long initiatory can take, we were there for an hour and a half, which is almost as long as a session. After P-day was finished, we had class and taught one Chinese lesson.  The lessons in Chinese are getting easier, but they still have a ways to go before I am ready to teach a full lesson in Chinese.

Tuesday, the biggest thing that occurred was the devotional.  For the devotional, we had six of the twelve apostles there.  There was: Elder Bednar, Elder Oaks, Elder Nelson, Elder Christofferson, Elder Anderson, and Elder Ballard.  Elder Christofferson was the one who actually spoke to us.  He talked about us doing missionary work, and standing for what we believe in.  My favorite comment he made had to do with people may not believe what you are saying, but they can not disprove your witness of God and his gospel.

On Wednesday, we got to host again.  It was really fun, but also really hot.  I didn't have a thermometer, but it sure felt like it was in the nineties when we were carrying all the suitcases around campus for all of the newly arriving elders and sisters.  This week, there were 450 new missionaries.  However, I have heard from the branch presidency that one of the weeks coming up, there are going to be 500 English speaking missionaries plus however many foreign speaking missionaries as well.  It is really going to start getting packed here at the MTC for the next few months.

For Thursday, we were only teaching lessons.  We taught one of our Gold Tags today and then one of our Chinese investigators, which is one of our teachers.  It really is a blast teaching in English because you know that you can get your point across, but the Chinese ones are always more interesting.  We were trying to talk about the weather and thunder storms, but we didn't know the Chinese words.  But we finally were able to explain what we were saying after describing the sky as exploding and there being lots of light.  We all got a kick out of that explanation for a thunder storm.

Friday, we only had one lesson, which was absolutely amazing.  We also had all of our study time to prepare for the lesson in Chinese, which felt great.  One thing that I have really started to notice at the MTC is the importance of prioritizing what you want to do because you don't really feel like you have enough time to get everything done, but with only having to prepare for one lesson, it actually felt like we did have the time, which was so nice.

As usual, for Saturdays, we had TRC, which is where people from the "outside world" come in and we teach them in Chinese.  All the people we taught were return missionaries from Taiwan, but it was really fun because if we didn't know a word and our companion didn't know the word, they would help us out or spend more time trying to explain what they were saying in Chinese, which was really nice.

And for Sunday, it was pretty good.  The biggest thing for Sunday is usually the devotional and then the movie that follows.  The devotional this time was given by Stephan B. Allen, who is over all the missionary work for the church.  His talk was mainly a bunch of short films made by the church.  Mom and Dad may know what they are, but they stopped using them a while ago.  They are old LDS commercials, advertising for the church.  He then would relate them to missionary work.  The biggest thing he talked about though was serving your mission to its fullest, because as you do that, you will learn to love others and love the Lord.  Which he said would pry be the greatest thing you will learn on your mission, is how to love others.

Anyways, time is about up.  Thanks for all the letters and prays.

Love,

Elder Okeson